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FairPoint takes heat for email problems

New FairPoint customers and state regulators are not pleased about the company's botch-up in transferring email accounts from Verizon in northern New England. Around 285,000 people were expected to switch email accounts from Verizon over to FairPoint servers. However, the company doesn't plan to offer credits for the service interruption.

FairPoint says it will have the customer problems with email and Internet fixed by the weekend. A FairPoint spokesperson said about 10 percent of its customers had problems switching over to a FairPoint email address when the company took over phone and Internet service from Verizon over the weekend.

Currently, the Charlotte, N.C.-based company has no plans to credit troubled customers. Over the weekend, FairPoint received more than 13,000 calls from customers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont who had trouble with email; the headcount doesn't include customers who hung up after failing to get a call through.

On Tuesday Vermont's Public Service Department described the email glitch as "more bad news" from FairPoint. "FairPoint could have done a better job communicating to customers in advance and preparing for an increase in customer calls," said Christopher Campbell, director of telecommunications at the Vermont Department of Public Service."

Linux advocate Jon "maddog" Hall, of Amherst, N.H., has found himself clobbered by the problems. Hall's failure to get email is dropping him off of open source mailing lists, and he, like many other transferred customers, has been stuck on hold for hours on the phone and online help queues without getting through

[Fierce will note that FairPoint seems to have adequate staffing on PR damage control staffing; we have received notes making minor corrections and comments to our stories over the past 10 days]

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